Application of Journal of Fluids Engineering CFD Verification Procedure to Flow Past Bluff Body Using Two Different Turbulence Models Available to Purchase

The ASME Journal of Fluids Engineering (JFE) recently adopted the grid convergence index (GCI) method as one of the methods among others to estimate the discretization error in CFD applications. The GCI method (based on Richardson extrapolation (RE)) is applied to CFD simulations of confined flow past a bluff-body and is used to evaluate the performance of two different turbulence models in predicting the flow. Four different grid densities (coarse, fine, finer and finest) are used in a 2D axisymmetric geometry along with the RNG k-ε model and the Reynolds stress transport (RST) turbulence models to predict the flow. A spline extrapolation (SE) method for the approximate error is also used to estimate the extrapolated value of the flow variables. The two models show monotonic and oscillatory convergence in various regions of the flow field. Results from the two turbulence models show different convergence behaviors. The results from the RE method as well as the SE method are assessed by comparing to the solution obtained on the finest grid as well as experimental data. The relative advantage of each of the methods is discussed. This study is a contribution towards testing the procedure proposed by JFE.